drew the first accurate maps. They established
schools among the Indians, sent missionaries to them, translated the
Bible into twelve Indian dialects, made thousands of converts, and
established an Indian policy as humane and enlightened--once Spanish
supremacy was recognized--as any in the world. The savages with whom
Spain had to contend were the deadliest, the most cruel, that Europeans
ever encountered--no more resembling the warriors of King Philip and the
Powhatan than a house-cat resembles a panther. They conquered them
without extermination, and converted them to Christianity! An amazing
feat, and one which disposes for all time of that old, outworn legend
that the Spain of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was a
moribund and degenerate nation.

But a change was at hand. The world moved, and Spain, chained to an
outworn superstition, did not move with it. The treasure she drew from
Mexico and Peru she poured out to prop the tottering pillars of church
despotism; and the end came when, in 1588, Elizabeth's doughty captains
wiped out the "invincible" armada, and dethroned Spain for all time from
her position as mistress of the seas.

It was then that English eyes turned toward the New World and that
projects of colonization were set afoot in earnest; and the one great
dominant hero of that early movement was Sir Walter Raleigh. He had
accompanied his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on a voyage to the
New World ten years earlier, and after Gilbert's tragic death, took over
the patent for land in America which Gilbert held. It is worth noting
that this patent provided in the plainest terms that such colonies as
might be planted in America should be self-governing in the fullest
sense--a provision also included in the patent granted to the company
which afterwards succeeded in gaining and maintaining a foothold on the
James.

Raleigh spent nearly a million dollars in endeavoring to establish a
colony on Roanoke Island--a colony which absolutely disappeared, and
whose fate was never certainly discovered; and it was not until the
Virgin Queen, after whom all that portion of the country had been named,
was dead, and Raleigh himself, shorn of his estates, was a prisoner in
the Tower under charge of treason, that a new charter was given to an
association of influential men known as the Virginia Company, which was
destined to have permanent results. On New Year's Day, 1607, an
expedition of three ships, ca